06 July, 2004

You chopped my dog in half!!!

Thats what I screamed at the jihadi bunny that had taken a sword to my dog and chopped the darn thing in half, except it was still running around...on two legs!! But then, thats the whole point of dreams, right, to be really crazy. Hmm, wonder what Freud would say about that one....
Anyway, actually got out into the field today, very exciting. Its also a lot of hard work, my hands are so tender from attacking the earth with a pick. First, we went to the site, San Jose de Moro, and Martìn, my group leader, had me dig a test pit near an adobe wall to see how far it went down. When we realized that it stopped at a certain point, I was sent to dig another test pit. Then came breakfast, this woman had prepared sandwiches which consisted of french fries and chicken on a bun. Sounds strange, but its actually really good. Yummy. Then I removed some random bones that were found, a femur and another possible femur...we are not exactly sure. It was pretty cool cause its a delicate job to remove bones some 1200 yrs old from the ground without breaking them, and it was nice that they were confident enough in me to let me do it. Lunch was served around 1, right when it becomes to hot to work. After lunch, they let us hang around and do nothing until it cooled off again (technically, the lunching hour is from 1 till 2:30). The nice part about it was I got to take a short little nap...so ha ha A, I can still take naps while working on an archaeological dig! The rest of the afternoon was spent trying to break this really hard soil to get to whats underneath. I am excited about tomorrow cause some digging revealed the top of a skull, and I hoping that we have a tomb there. There´s a bunch of tombs in another area close to the one I am working on, and unfortunately my camera wasnt working, but thankfully I will be able to take pics tomorrow of the skeletons. They´re pretty awesome. Considering that we worked from 7 till about 5, the day passed by really quickly just cause the work is so hard and heavy that you do not even realize the passage of time. But boy did it get hot, thankfully Segundo gave me his cap and Martìn bought everyone in his area popsicles, which came in at just the right time when the sun was practically straight over head. Oh yeah, have I mentioned the dust yet? There is so much of it, I could make a beach just from whats in my lungs. Coming home to shower was the best feeling in the world and I am sure that as the days pass water will just mean that much to me.
During breakfast I bonded with the locals that work with us, and one of them, Conejo, asked me if my parents were from Brazil. I told him about my mom being from Indonesia, and I showed the the fold in my eyes...Conejo was like, "I could tell that you are of diffent races" (in spanish though). I talked to them about Indonesia and showed them my tatoos, and talked about my name. It was pretty cool. To make it easier on everyone I told them to call me Mari, as it is the first four letters of my name---they call it my "Spanish name", which I think is funny. Still, it takes me a while to respond, just cause I am not used to it. But hey, just give me six weeks.....

Eve

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